Sketches of a Not So Distant Present
by pencil gal
Summary: On a ten hour flight from Dublin to Montreal, and with Caitlin sleeping the whole time, Peter gets bored. So he figures, why not spend the time drawing? Missing scene from Season 2. Implied Peter/Claire, Peter/Caitlin.


**Disclaimer: **_Heroes_ belongs to Tim Kring and the NBC. I am in no way affiliated with either and am simply borrowing the characters for a short time.

**Sketches of**** a Not So Distant Present**

For the first hour of the Dublin-Montreal flight Peter sat in his seat, absolutely bored out of his mind.

Caitlin had taken sleeping pills at the start of the flight and was already asleep. Peter glanced around and could see everyone settling in for the long flight. People were reading, or writing, or following Caitlin's example and sleeping. Peter was feeling too awake and jittery for any of those options though. He began tapping his foot on the floor and pulled a pen out of his pocket. (He had picked the pen up in the airport. It was one of those clicky ones with the four different coloured inks. He had the weird feeling that he had wanted one as a child in some other life but had always been denied and that this was his rebellion twenty years too late.)

He was tempted to start clicking his pen but he didn't for fear of waking Caitlin up. He knew she hated flying (she had whispered it to him the night before as if it was an embarrassing secret that no one else could know) and if sleeping through the entire flight is her way of dealing then he didn't want to disturb her. He thinks this, what she's doing, is bravery, because doing something you loathe, something that terrifies you, just so you can help someone else takes courage (he might not have his memories but he still knows what's right and what's wrong, what is and what isn't, and to him this is bravery).

He has an odd feeling that someone else had done this before, agreed to something they really didn't want to do so that they could help him. But as much as he tried he couldn't who or what it was so eventually he just let the thought go.

A stewardess came by and Peter stopped her to ask if there was any chance he would be able to have some blank paper (if there was any spare of course and only if it wasn't too much trouble, he was still a gentleman after all and wouldn't want to put anyone out).

---

It is during the second hour of the flight that Peter draws the first picture.

It is small and jammed into the corner of the piece of paper but there is no mistaking that it is the face of a young girl. Peter glances at Caitlin to make sure she's still sleeping soundly before raising the picture up so he can closely inspect it.

The girl looked like she would be about sixteen and her eyes were directed towards the side. She was smiling but there was something about her smile and something in her eyes that make her look so sad. She looked like she was trying to use her smile to cover the fact that she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.

He stared at the sketch for minutes and minutes, memorising everything about her hair and eyes and lips. He traced the lines of her cheekbones and discovered every dip and detail of her ears and neck and collarbone. He desperately wracked his memory, searching in vain for a name to put to this face. He knows that he knows this girl, knows it as a fact, knows it as clearly as he knows that he is currently sitting next to Caitlin on a plane headed for Montreal.

Peter huffed in frustration when his mind came up blank. No name, no face, nothing. Only the feeling that he knows this girl, that he should remember her, that it is important for him to remember her, but with nothing in his limited memory to back that feeling up. He folded the piece of paper up and tucked it into his pocket (he was tempted to scrunch it up and throw it away but didn't because this girl was obviously important somehow). He crossed his arms, feeling angry with himself and turned his head to stare out the window.

Peter started clicking his pen, no longer caring who he might annoy by doing so.

---

He woke up sometime during the fourth hour of the flight. A quick glance at the television screen in the seat in front of him showed him that he'd only been asleep for about half an hour. He sighed and looked over at Caitlin as she shifted in her sleep. Peter smiled slightly and pushed a wayward lock of hair back behind her ear.

He considered watching a movie but decided that he was too restless to be able to concentrate on it. He reached over to take Caitlin's hand and couldn't help grinning when she unconsciously moved her head to his shoulder. Peter moved slightly and tried to relax back into his seat.

Closing his eyes, he attempted to drift back to sleep.

---

Peter drew three pictures during the fifth hour.

He had already given up on the idea of sleep when three attempts had resulted in no more than a combined fifty minutes. Eventually he had pulled out his pad of paper and the pen and started drawing when he could think of nothing else to do.

All three drawings were of the same girl from before, a cheerleader if the new drawings were anything to go by. The first one wasn't that important to him, it was just the girl wearing a blue cheerleading outfit and walking down the street with a boy about her age. The other two drawings though, they had Peter thinking and analysing and wracking his brain again. Because he had drawn himself in both sketches.

In the second drawing the cheerleader was wearing a red uniform and she and Peter were sitting on the ground facing each other. There was a homecoming banner on the wall behind them with the name of a high school on it. And they were both covered in blood. Lots of blood.

The third drawing was completely different. The girl was wearing a green cheerleading uniform (Peter couldn't help wondering if this girl moved around a lot considering the three different uniforms he had drawn her in) and she was hugging him. He could just see a hint of a smile on the girl's face but it was different to the smile she had had in the original sketch. This smile was genuinely happy. And he looked happy as well. Relieved. Thankful.

Peter placed the two sketches featuring him next to each other to compare them. He wondered if the events in the drawings had already happened, if they were suppressed memories that he couldn't reach using his conscious mind, or if they were still to come in the future. After all he had no idea how his powers worked. Could he only paint the future, or could he paint the past as well? Did he save this cheerleader from something? Did she save him? Who was she to him? How did they meet? Where would they meet? What was her name?

Peter folded up the drawings and put them into his pocket with the other drawing. He decided that he simply wouldn't think about it anymore. There were too many questions and not even one bleeding answer for any of them.

---

Caitlin woke up during the seventh hour of the flight. Peter looked away from the movie he was watching and smiled when he found her digging through her hand luggage. "Hey, you're awake," he murmured to grab her attention.

"Not for long," she grumbled, still rooting through her bag. Caitlin grinned triumphantly as she held up her sleeping pills. She quickly pecked Peter on the lips and was about to swallow her pills when Peter stopped her.

"Caitlin," he whispered as he leaned in to kiss her. Caitlin smiled at him as he pulled away after the kiss. "Thank you," Peter finished.

"For what?"

"Just for being here. Now go back to sleep."

"Gladly," she joked.

Peter returned his attention to the movie as Caitlin settled herself in to sleep for the remainder of the flight.

---

He drew three sketches in the eighth hour of the flight. The movie had already finished and he certainly had nothing better to do while just sitting there, so he had figured why not?

The cheerleader was wearing the green uniform in all three pictures. Peter decided he liked these pictures. Everyone looked happy in them. The first picture showed him and the girl sitting on a sofa together, leaning against each other and sleeping peacefully. In the next, Peter was holding the cheerleader against him and they were flying over a city. (Flying? He could fly? That was actually… kind of cool.)

The last drawing had the girl smiling brightly and positioned between him and another man. Peter's brows furrowed slightly as he stared at the other man in the picture. He knew him, had seen him somewhere before. It suddenly hit him and he pulled the photo from his bag. Peter held the photo from the box up next to the drawing and rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on, when he saw the similarities. It was definitely the same man but he still had no idea who it could be. A friend? Or a family member? A brother?

Peter focused again just on the drawing. All three of them were grinning and both men had an arm around the girl. It was like they were celebrating something. He traced his fingers over the three figures and wondered.

He shook his head and dropped everything back into his bag. Leaning his head back against the seat with a sigh, he stared up at the roof and tried to think things through, tried to figure it all out. He failed. He just didn't know enough to put the pieces together.

---

Peter threw the two pictures he drew during the ninth hour into his bag. He glanced around the aeroplane as he thought about what he had drawn. Both drawings had the cheerleader in her blue uniform and in both she was in trouble. In one she was strapped down to a chair and was glaring at the shadow man with the glasses and syringe. In the other a boy was dragging her away from a man that had been shot through the eye.

Peter tapped his fingers against the arm of his seat before bringing the sketches back out to examine them again. Was this why he was on his way to Montreal? Was this what awaited him in the unfamiliar city? The damsel in distress that needed rescuing and the evil to be defeated. And why did that scenario sound so familiar to him?

He sucked in his breath and glanced over at Caitlin. Was he leading her straight into danger? All he'd brought her since he'd arrived at her pub with no memory was trouble. Her brother was dead because someone had been looking for him. And now they were about to step into another dangerous situation where she could get killed and where this cheerleader could get killed and he had no idea what to do about any of it.

Feeling frustrated Peter threw the pictures into his bag again for the second time in five minutes. He wanted to clear his head, to simply sit and not think or analyse or question anything, but these drawings wouldn't let him. So rather than freeing his mind and relaxing for the remainder of the flight Peter was stuck with all the same questions running through his head constantly, one after the other, repeating themselves like a broken record.

---

Caitlin gulped and grasped the arms of her seat tightly. The plane was about to land and there seemed to be a bit of turbulence and she was very much awake for all of it. She looked over at Peter, hoping that he would comfort her, tell her that it was okay, that she was crazy to think they would crash, but she found him with his eyes glazed over and drawing. Her curiosity managed to overcome her fear and she leaned closer to Peter, momentarily forgetting that the plane was landing and could crash any second.

She tilted her head as Peter finished the drawing and his eyes returned to normal. From what she could tell it looked like the inside of a dark train. Peter was facing a shorter Asian man with a sword. And there seemed to be words written in the background behind the two figures. Caitlin raised her eyes to look at Peter as she heard him mutter, "Save the cheerleader, save the world."

She frowned. "Pardon?"

Peter glanced up at her, finally, distracted by the picture in front of him, and pointed to the words. "Save the cheerleader, save the world. That's what it says."

"Who's the guy with you?" Caitlin asked.

Peter shook his head. "Never seen him before." He was confused. Every other picture that he'd drawn had featured the teenage girl. And what was with words written in the background?

Caitlin took the sketch from him to have a better look at it. "What do you think it means?" she asked, intrigued by the phrase written in the background of the picture.

Peter sighed and thought back through all the pictures he had sketched during the flight. None of this made any sense to him. All he really knew was that apparently he was meant to save the cheerleader. But he had no idea how to find her or help her. There was no guarantee that she was in Montreal like he had guessed earlier. "I honestly have no idea," he replied, exasperated.

He glanced out his window and realised that they had arrived. A second later a voice came over the intercom. "We have now landed in Montreal. Please enjoy your stay and thank you for flying British Airways."

As he and Caitlin stepped off the aeroplane, Peter had one last thought.

_Well, here goes nothing._


End file.
